The present invention relates generally to business methods and more particularly to methods for referring practitioners certified to perform certain procedures to prospective patients.
Quality healthcare is a matter of overriding concern to the U.S. and worldwide populations. New medical and dental devices and procedures have been and will continue to contribute significantly to improvements in the quality of healthcare in the U.S. and abroad. Each new procedure is unique, and many new procedures and technologies require a learning period for the practitioner. For many such technologies, the creator of the technology, typically a company having a proprietary interest in the technology, will play a significant role in developing and disseminating the technology to practitioners. Frequently, the company will offer training to licensed doctors, dentists, and other health professionals, and will make “certification” resulting from such training a prerequisite to the dispensing and distribution of devices required to perform the new procedures.
Of particular interest to the present application, Align Technology, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., has recently developed an orthodontic treatment system under the Invisalign® trade name. The Invisalign® System is dispensed to patients only by orthodontic practitioners who have been certified by Align to perform the new orthodontic procedure.
Align Technology, Inc., maintains an advertising campaign intended to inform patients of the availability and advantages of orthodontic treatment using the Invisalign® System. As part of the advertising campaign, potential patients are invited to contact Align by telephone or over the internet. As a result of such solicitation, Align receives many patient inquiries and is in a position to refer patients to individual practitioners.
In referring potential patients to individual practitioners, several objectives must be met. First, the referral process should be inclusive and assure that at least many of the practitioners who have been certified will receive referrals to assist them in developing their practices. It is also important, however, to avoid over loading relatively inexperienced practitioners who might otherwise benefit from additional time and patient experience to develop their skills in the new procedures. Finally, it would be advantageous to direct a larger number of potential patients to those practitioners who have demonstrated an ability to handle larger case loads and who have developed more skills and efficiencies in the new procedures.
For these reasons, it would be desirable to develop and implement new methods and procedures for referring patients to practitioners for performing novel and often proprietary medical procedures. Such methods and systems should provide referrals to most or all of the practitioners who have become certified to perform a new procedure but should preferentially direct referrals to those practitioners who are best able to handle a large number of patients. At least some of these objectives will be met by the inventions described hereinafter.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides methods and systems for referring patients to practitioners who perform medical procedures. The medical procedures will typically be new and innovative procedures which are being introduced into the medical community by a company, organization, or institution which has developed the procedure and which usually has proprietary rights to the procedure. In this way, the company, organization, or other institution can maintain control over performance of the procedure, typically by controlling training of the practitioners as well as by dispensing and distributing of the tools, devices, and kits required to perform the procedures. An exemplary procedure for referral according to the present invention is an orthodontic procedure which is performed using the Invisalign® System available from Align Technology, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif. The procedure as well as the appliances used in the procedure are proprietary and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,975,893, as well as the following pending U.S. patent applications:
09/466,35309/298,26809/454,78609/454,27809/483,07109/169,27609/169,03609/169,03409/313,29109/264,54709/313,29009/311,94109/311,71609/311,71509/539,18509/539,02109/534,46160/199,48560/199,66260/199,66360/199,61060/199,46509/616,22209/506,41909/560,05209/557,38209/566,42409/576,72109/621,71609/620,25309/626,19209/641,208.The disclosures of the issued patent, as well as all pending applications, are incorporated herein by reference.
In a first aspect of the present invention, a method for referring patients to practitioners comprises certifying a group of practitioners to perform a medical procedure, such as an orthodontic procedure. Individual patients who wish to receive the procedure are identified, and the identified patients are provided with a referral list of certified practitioners. In order to assure that most patients are referred to practitioners who have significant experience in performing the procedure, the list preferentially includes and/or presents practitioners who have performed more procedures than other practitioners. Typically, the practitioners will be placed into “tiers” or levels which reflect the number of procedures performed, with those practitioners who have performed more procedures being assigned to higher tiers while those who have performed fewer procedures are assigned to lower tiers. The ability to direct or channel patients to experienced practitioners has a number of advantages. The majority of patients will be seen by practitioners who have significant experience and who have probably gained additional skills. Conversely, by directing or channeling fewer referral patients to those practitioners with less experience, those practitioners can gain experience without becoming overwhelmed with referrals. Additionally, those practitioners who have decided to emphasize or focus their practice on the procedure will benefit from a continuing referral base of patients interested in having the procedure performed.
Certification of the practitioners may be as simple as registering those practitioners who have a desire to perform the procedure. More usually, however, the practitioners will undergo education and/or training prior to certification. Such training will typically be provided by the company, organization, or other institution which sponsors the procedure, typically in the form of formal training sessions (e.g., seminars), written materials, electronic teaching materials, and presentations by a sales force, and the like. In addition to training, certification may require that the practitioners be tested, and in some instances it may be desirable to require that the practitioners perform at least one procedure, usually with a previously certified practitioner or trainer present.
Once certified, the names, addresses, and other contact information (such as phone number, facsimile number, e-mail address, and the like) will be collected for the practitioner and maintained in a referral directory. The referral directory will be updated periodically with new practitioners being added as they become certified. Of course, practitioners can be removed from the referral directory as well. Practitioners may be removed at their request or by action of the company, organization, or institution which maintains the referral directory. For example, should for any reason it become apparent that the practitioner has in the past, or continues to perform the procedure in an unacceptable fashion, the practitioner's name may be removed from the referral directory. The referral directory will also be updated with respect to status. For example, as practitioners perform additional procedures, the tier or other status designation may be upgraded. In instances where the sponsoring company or organization distributes the product necessary to perform the procedure, the number of procedures performed by an individual practitioner can be updated based on the number of kits, tools, or other products ordered by the practitioner from the sponsoring organization.
The referral directory will be organized in a manner which facilitates providing referrals information to individual patients. In particular, the referral directory will allow the sorting and retrieval of practitioners practicing in a given geographic area to facilitate matching of practitioners with the locations of prospective patients. For example, the referral directory may allow identification of doctors based on their addresses, zip codes, or the like, where that information can be matched with similar information from the prospective patient. From the geographic information, in most instances at least, a significant number of practitioners could be identified for any particular prospective patient. According to the present invention, however, the practitioners who are closer to the patient will be further selected so that the experienced practitioners who have performed more procedures are preferentially included on a referral list which is eventually provided to the patient. Usually, the practitioners will be arranged into tiers or levels based upon the number of procedures that they have performed. Practitioners may be randomly ordered within a tier or may further be ranked in a tier, typically based on the number of procedures performed. Usually, each tier will be defined by a threshold of a number of procedures performed over a selected period of time. Alternatively, the threshold number may be the cumulative or aggregate number of procedures performed by the practitioner measured from the time they began performing the procedure.
Usually, there will be at least three tiers to which the practitioners will be assigned. For example, practitioners may be assigned to an initial or lowest tier when they first become certified. After performing a certain threshold number of procedures, typically in the range from 5 to 25 during a calendar quarter, for the exemplary use of the Invisalign® System, practitioners may be assigned to an intermediate or next higher tier. The third or highest tier would then be achieved when the practitioner has performed a still higher threshold number of procedures, typically in the range from 10 to 50 procedures during a calendar quarter. Of course, there could be fourth, fifth, and even higher tiers, each of which would have a still higher threshold number of procedures defining its entry level.
In a second aspect, methods according to the present invention for referring patients to dental practitioners comprise certifying the dental practitioners to perform a dental procedures, such as the orthodontic procedure using the Invisalign® System described above. The method further comprises informing a potential patient population of the availability of the procedure, typically through advertising in the print and electronic media. Individual patients who are identified are provided with a referral list of certified practitioners, where the practitioners are placed on the referral lists based on one or more performance criteria, typically including at least the number of procedures performed. The number of procedures performed may be determined over a preselected or fixed time period or alternatively may represent the cumulative or aggregate number of procedures performed by the practitioner. The certification process has generally been described above. The practitioners are preferentially placed on the referral lists typically utilizing a tiering approach as described above. Individual patients will usually contact a referral center either by telephone, e-mail, or other electronic communication system.
In a third aspect of the present invention, methods for referring patients to practitioners comprise maintaining a referral directory, soliciting and receiving inquiries from prospective patients, and referring to individual patients practitioners from the referral directory that are located within the patient's geographic area. As described previously, the listing of practitioners in the referral directory will usually be prioritized into a plurality of tiers, typically at least three, depending on the number of procedures that each practitioner has performed. Maintaining the referral directory comprises certifying practitioners to perform the procedure, tracking the number of times each certified practitioner performs the procedure to produce a performance number for that practitioner, and periodically updating the referral directory to reflect updated performance numbers. As before, the performance numbers can either be based on the cumulative or aggregate number of procedures performed, but will more usually be based on the number of procedures performed by an individual practitioner over a predetermined time interval.
Soliciting typically comprises advertising and providing contact information that permits a prospective patient to contact a referral center. The referral center may be staffed by people who answer telephones or respond to electronic communications or may be provided by an automated response system, such as a telephone or web-based system which allows a patient to navigate through the system using a series of menus and prompts. Referring will comprise first determining a patient's geographic area and then generating from the referral directory a referral list of practitioners within the patient's geographic area. Usually, the list will include a plurality of practitioners from the geographic area, where the practitioners are selected and/or arranged so that practitioners from the higher tiers are preferentially presented relative to practitioners from a lower tier. The preference can be that the practitioners from higher tiers are listed more frequently, i.e., on more referral lists, than practitioners from lower tiers. Alternatively or additionally, practitioners from higher tiers may be placed more prominently on a referral list, e.g., usually at the beginning of the list rather than near an end of the list. By providing such preferential listings, it is expected that the practitioners on higher tiers who have performed more procedures will be contacted by more prospective patients as a result of the referral process than will practitioners from lower tiers.
In other cases, referring may comprise determining the location of the patient's geographic area and then selecting a single practitioner to be referred to the patient. In that case, the practitioners from higher tiers will be selected more frequently than those from lower tiers, thus again causing the practitioners from higher tiers to receive more referral calls from prospective patients. With both of these approaches, however, it may be preferred that all practitioners included in the referral directory will receive at least some calls (although in some instances the practitioners in the lower tiers may only receive referrals when no practitioners from higher tiers are present in a patient's geographic area). It may be advantageous that the practitioners from the lower tiers receive referrals (although in lesser number or at a lower rate) to give them the opportunity to gain experience in the procedure with less likelihood that they will be overwhelmed with referrals and new patients desiring to have the procedure. Additionally, those practitioners in the lower tiers who choose to do so may make an effort to work with both the referred patients as well as patients from other referral sources in order to increase the number of procedures that they perform and are in a higher tier in which case they will receive more referrals.
In yet another aspect of the present invention, a computer system having a processor and memory for generating a list of medical practitioners for referring to potential patients comprises a means for maintaining a referral directory and a means for sorting practitioners on the referral directory to produce a referral list. The means for maintaining a referral directory will include contact information for practitioners who are certified to perform the procedure wherein the practitioners are prioritized in a plurality of tiers depending on the number of procedures that they have performed. The means for sorting produces a referral list in response to an inquiry from a prospective patient wherein practitioners are first selected based on proximity to the geographic area of the patient. The practitioners are further preferentially selected based on the tier to which the practitioner has been assigned. As described above, the referral list may include a plurality of practitioners where the practitioners from the higher tiers may be included more often (or in some cases exclusively) on lists and/or included more prominently on lists, i.e., placed higher on a list than a practitioner in the same area but from a lower tier. Alternatively, the referral list may include only a single practitioner, where practitioners from the same geographic areas but from higher tiers are included on more lists than those from lower tiers. A computer system will further comprise means for inputting data into the maintaining means and means for displaying the referral lists. In a specific example, the display means is a visual display means which is useful for human operators manning telephone call centers. The computer system may be used as a part of a web-based system for automatically producing referral lists for prospective patients who choose to contact he provider over the web.